Birnam is a town in Perthshire, Scotland. The town originated from the Victorian era with the coming of the railway in 1856, although the place and name is well known because William Shakespeare mentioned Birnam Wood in Macbeth.[2] Prior to the construction of the railway, the only substantial building on the site of the present village was the church of Little Dunkeld parish, which still stands in its ancient position within a graveyard within the village.

Dunkeld, which is thought[who?] to date back to the sixth century when a monastery was founded, and where Kenneth MacAlpin, the first King of Scotland, moved the bones of St. Columba around the middle of the 9th century, lies on the opposite bank of the river.